Hans Rott was born on August 1, 1858 in Braunhirschengrund,
a suburban parish of Vienna (today Vienna XV) as illegitimate
son of the actor Carl Mathias Rott (real name Roth)
and the singer and actress Maria Rosalia Lutz. After
his parents had married his father legitimized him in
1863.

From 1874 to 1878 he studied at the Conservatoire for
Music and Performing Arts of the Society of the Friends
of Music in Vienna: piano with Leopold Landskron, organ
with Anton Bruckner, harmony with Hermann Grädener and
composition with Franz Krenn (together with Gustav Mahler
and others).

1876 Rott, a member of the Viennese Academic Wagner
Society, attended the first Bayreuth Festival. From
1876 to 1878 he was employed as organist at the Piaristen
Church (Maria Treu) in Vienna with lodgings in the Piaristen
Monastery. His rooms became the meeting point for numerous
fellow students and friends, among them the musicians
Rudolf Krzyzanowski, Gustav Mahler, Hugo Wolf, the philologist
and archaeologist Friedrich Löwy (as from 1887 Löhr)
as well as the scholar of German philology Joseph Seemüller.

Still during his musical studies Rott became an orphan
in 1876. Anton Bruckner tried in vain to find a post
as organist in St Florian resp. Klosterneuburg for his
"favourite student". From 1878 on Rott made a living
by giving private music lessons and he received financial
support from his friends.

When in September 1880 he presented his First Symphony
to Johannes Brahms, a member of the jury deciding on
the grant of a state scholarship Rott had applied for,
he met with a harsh rebuff by Bruckner's antipode. And
yet another of his hopes was doomed: Court Opera Conductor
Hans Richter, although showing an interest in a performance
of the symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra,
was reluctant to commit himself.

In October 1880 chain of unfortunate accidents exerting
a heavy psychic strain on Rott caused an already lurking
insanity to break out. During a train ride to Mulhouse
in the Alsace where he had accepted a position as music
director and choir master he pointed a pistol at a fellow
traveller to prevent him from lighting a cigar. The
reason for his conduct he gave was that Brahms had had
the carriage filled with dynamite.

In February 1881 Rott was transferred from the Psychiatric
Hospital of the General Hospital in Vienna to the Provincial
Lunatic Asylum of Lower Austria. The diagnosis was:
insanity, hallucinatory persecution mania. He continued
composing at the asylum, later on, however, he gradually
developed a deep depression and destroyed some of his
compositions. Following several attempts of suicide
he finally died of tuberculosis on June 25, 1884 not
yet 26 years old.